In the fall of 1963, when I was 10, I’d had enough of grade school and decided to pursue an independent study course in Autology. The first thing was to find a new institution of education. Fortunately, the Chevy-Buick-Cadillac dealer in downtown Iowa City fell within the range of my bike-riding endurance, and it quickly became my new school building. I spent time in its various classrooms, which were mobile and changed from time to time; my favorite was the 1964 Riviera. But the teachers weren’t very helpful; they just sat at their desks with a slightly disdainful look.

Fortunately, my new school was very well supplied with textbooks that I was allowed to take home for in-depth memorization. Although there was never a test, I could still pass one given today, so deeply etched were their contents on my young, desperate-for-information brain. The Buick textbook was easily the most comprehensive. Just one look at the cover tells you how serious it is. It contained 40 pages of the most wonderful information ever, presented in a way that really made the facts come alive. Just wait ’till you see the chapters on engines and even transmissions–and such cute models, too.

The index also could be my favorite page, being so educational by pointing out the fine differences in exterior trim details among the myriad Buick models. I’ve been waiting all my life to actually see a LeSabre convertible with dog dish hubcaps and blackwall tires, but you never know. Actually, every car here has blackwalls, since Buick didn’t want to misrepresent anything. And did you know that Buick actually made a stripper Special convertible? I would never have guessed.

While I can’t show you all 40 pages, I will give you an inkling of what I wallowed in. This is a picture of my favorite classroom, just to give you a sense of the fine ambiance I enjoyed during my intensive studies: an interior truly worthy of being fondled. I took turns studying in each of the four seats. The teachers didn’t seem all too thrilled with that, and would raise their eyebrows every time I switched seats, but none ever said a word. I guess they could see I was a serious student.

This page convinced me that my future was on the California coast. And also that I liked pretty women. And that I would drive an Electra 225, under the right circumstances.

Especially since its rear seat seemed so inviting and commodious.

The seats of each Buick model were pictured in great detail, and always with the right sort of person(s), which was a recurring theme in the Book of New Buicks. This Wildcat’s owner is about to go harpooning, which seems apt. But why is he driving a four-door hardtop? And with bucket seats? The brochure says the combo was available, but I’ve never seen that one in real life either. Have you? Do you know of other big four-doors of that era that could be had with buckets and console?

Only the lowliest Special didn’t get matched with a person; apparently, its upholstery is fit only for a dog.

Buick took this approach pretty far, trying hard to give their cars human-like personalities. I found this page interesting on some subliminal level, but I still wanted more hard facts than it conveyed.

This is more like it, although still a bit short on raw details like bores and strokes. And I didn’t get why they matched up the prettiest girl with the little V6. It should have been an old flintskin.

Now who else could find such suitable human beings to represent the available transmissions? What a brilliant idea. If Buick had offered the Dynaflow in 1964, it would have been shown with a fat old lady sitting in an easy chair with her feet up.

So where’s that stripper Special convertible? Way in the back, of course, and sporting full wheel covers and whitewalls like all the other Buicks: so much for consistency. I’ve kept my eyeballs peeled for a Special convertible ever since I saw it in the Book of New Buicks, but I’ve never seen one. Could a textbook actually be misleading?

Special rags were (in the day)/are (the few that may have survived) by about as rare as ’59-’62 Chevy Bel Air four-door hardtops . . . they were there and available . . . but rarely ordered and seen. I have seen one ’59 Bel Air hardtop in my youth . . . never anything newer than that. The few pillarless Bel Airs of this vintage I’ve seen were ’61-’62 bubble top coupes . . . and I remember seeing a ’60 Bel Air two door hardtop coupe at a Humboldt County car show about 10 years ago.

I had a ’63 Special sedan with the little V-6 and two-speed; it was a decent car that I wanted to “restore” . . . . but didn’t have the $$$/time, so I sold it to a shipmate for $300.00. He drove it up to Seattle from Alameda without incident and kept the car up there for about another year.

No doubt about it the Buick big books are the best brochures ever. Not just against the other GM lines but all mfgs.

The thing I learned in class today was the existence of the Electra 225 6 window pillarless hard top. I knew about the availability of the Special convertible, not that I’ve seen one either. For some reason the Skylark was the volume midsize, Specials and Special Deluxes just weren’t that common.

I recall seeing lots of deuce-and-a-quarter 6 window pillarless sedans in my years growing up. To this day, there is a fuscia metallic one floating (!) around downtown Honolulu in the Kakaako district (this one’s a ’63). Fairly clean too. Suspect the guy doesn’t drive it much as Supreme runs about $4.59 a gallon (regular around $4.30 these days). Not to mention, this one spends time parallel parked curbside as most diagonal parking spaces on this island won’t accomodate the large cars of yore.

I love the arbitrary division of “coupes” from “sport coupes”. I think that the difference is described in dollars.

When I was in grade school, a friend’s parents drove a 64 Estate Wagon (I cannot recall if 2 or 3 seats). It was that nondescript metallic beige with dog dish hubcaps. It stood out because I could not ever remember seeing another one. Why were there dog dish caps offered on these to start with? It’s a Buick, ferkryinoutloud.

I know what you mean about the school of car showrooms. I started with some pieces given to me from 1970 Chevrolets – individual flat sheets the size of placemats with a picture on the front and details on the back. Then I got serious in 1971 or 72 and sent in an order to the Ford Motor Company for the book (propaganda?) Car Buying Made Easier. They sent it for free. Imagine. Then, with Mom on the prowl for a new car, we got several other brochures. I remember the Ford books pretty well. So many fields of yellow weeds with cars parked in them.

1) I’ve seen a bucket seated Wildcat 4 Door Hardtop. But it was a ’65 and I think it also had a 4 Speed. Rare, but once a year I see a early-mid 60’s Big Buick (more often the Coupes) with a Stick. I think the first oddity I saw was in Hemmings in High School. A LeSabre Sedan (not even hardtop) with a 4 Speed. I wanna say I’ve seen a few 1963 or 64 Ford Galaxie 500 4 door hardtops with buckets…..

2) Seen a Special Convertible, although with top line (?) wheel covers. Sadly I only got one shot, and that was almost 3 years ago. From across the street you could hear that it was a Fireball V6.

3) My dream is to make my life look like that Electra 225 Six Window on what looks like Crissy Field.

My best friends Dad in 1965 bought a new 66 New Yorker 4 door hardtop with buckets and a console. Only one I have ever seen. When he brought it home, we proceeded to play in it until we ran the battery down working the Power Windows and Seats. Guess he did not like the buckets since he traded it the next year on one with the split bench.

My grandparents had a 64 Buick LeSabre Sedan. Did not have the wide side molding or chrome window moldings but was loaded with power windows, seats and AC which was rare in PA at that time.

1966 Chrysler 4-doors hardtops were available with bucket seats and either a console or column shifter. If you got buckets and no console, you got the “buddy seat” in between, which is the fold-down armrest that psfm mentions.

1966 Chrysler Town & Country wagons could also be had with bucket seats, but no console, only the buddy seat. (Never say never with Chrysler though. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a ’66 T&C somewhere out there with a factory console.)

In my youth at one of the second-tier indie used car lots in San Rafael, I remember seeing a very clean ’64 Mercury Marauder; black over black four door hardtop with a console and a four speed toploader! I took my time riding my bike home from junior high school to look and gawk at cars. This sighting would’ve been circa 1972. At that same car lot (used to be Dervin’s Used cars on the corner of Fourth Street and Irwin Street) he once had a nice, clean blue on blue ’65 Pontiac Bonneville wagon with the eight-lug wheels, factory air and a four-speed!! I tried to get my Dad to bite off on that one. No dice.

BTW we did have a nice blue ’64 Skylark 2 door hardtop (which my sister wrecked) and my brother had a ’67 Skylark 2 door hardtop. The ’64 had the nailhead 300 four pot and two-speed “Super Turbine 300” (Jetaway in Olds speak); the ’67 with the 90 degree 300 2-bbl and two-speeder.

The Marina District!! You’re right, Lawrence. Change the styles of clothes, park some 21st Century cars on Marina or nearby Divisadero and nothing’s changed. This LeSabre could’ve come from Geary Buick in the day, or, if a Marin car, Stenstrom Buick. And with Union 76 minute-man service, fill up on premium while one guy would pump the gas, another checked your tire pressure and a third guy was looking under the hood. All three guys with white uniforms, dark blue bow ties and white “Union 76” garrison caps. Kids like me got the Union 76 styrofoam antenna ball !!

Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Mike. I’ve seen photos of some San Francisco inhabitants without much in the way of clothes, and right out on the public streets, that really make me think I don’t want to come near the place. Way worse than anything seen during the “Occupy” nonsense.

Wildcat was the name of a series of 1950s GM Motorama Buick show cars. Ditto for “Biscayne” (Chevrolet), Firebird (originally a Cadillac show car moniker). LeSabre was carried over from the Buick show car of 1951 (beginning in 1959).

Centurion certainly didn’t sound as good that’s for sure and it didn’t take long before the midrange Buick name plate no longer existed after that name change. However the “sporty” midrange Buick never sold all that well. I guess if you were going to step up from the LeSabre you went all the way and if you were buying a Buick you likely weren’t looking for a Hotrod by the mid 60’s.

When I was a kid I always thought “Skylark” was a very feminine-sounding name for a car (and tended to think Buicks in general were “girly” or “old lady” cars). On the other hand, “Wildcat” was a whole different, er, animal. I’d love to see a new Wildcat, but I’m not holding my breath.

There was an attorney in Nashville in the ’80s who drove a black ’63 Wildcat with the vanity plate, “ZORRO”. Very slick, slightly sinister-looking car, and nice for drawing a little extra attention to his practice. 🙂

The Wildcat name started as the name for their engines and then it became the model that replaced the Invicta and was marketed as “sporty”. The LeSabre and Electra names carried on and on. Now that I think about it the LeSabre has to be one of the longest continuously running model name starting in 1959 and running until 2005.

This is a very design-led piece of literature. That Electra is gorgeous, along with the other “hardtop” sedans, but the Special looks positively utilitarian, and in a way I do not associate usually with the brand. That could be due to being born in the ’80s, an era in which Buick’s variants of even the J-body, N-body and X-body were quite decorated relative to their counterparts sold by other GM divisions.

I also have a textbook, as it were, for the 1991 introduction (in Europe) of the Volvo 850 which I found at the Volvo museum. I’m pretty sure it’s quite rare, but definitely much, much less graphics intensive.

I was doing the same as you, that year and that age Paul. My bike range included most makes, Ford, Chevy and Buick I remember best. I’d go out the week before unveiling and peer through the chain links to spy on the new cars in the back lots. The changes were so exciting! New faces to me, like new superheroes to a comic fan. I was ten.

Then after intro, back to see them up close. I’d wander into each showroom trying not to attract attention, and slip away with one of each, if they’d let me. I remember the first-year Riviera brochure best of all. It was big, with expensive glossy top-quality printing on heavy paper. Fabulous.

Of course my parents got rid of everything when I went off to college.

Wonder what the pricing was like with those lower-end Specials. If you could get a Malibu SS for the price of a stripper Special, it would be a no-brainer.

Guessing, though, that such was not the case. I could imagine dealers keeping those Specials on hand as second cars for Electra buyers. Or maybe you pick up a Special wagon for work around the horse farm. Buick didn’t call its big ones “Estate Wagons” for nothing.

It saddens me to think that showroom brochures are fast becoming things of the past. When I bought my Escape last December, I asked for a brochure, they didn’t have any. I asked why and they said that Ford was pushing for more people to just go to the website. It broke my heart.

When I was growing up there was only one dealership within bicycle distance, a Chevrolet-only shop. One of the salesmen noticed that I would come and look around the lot frequently and occasionally venture into the showroom, and befriended me. He used to set aside copies of all the brochures for me because he knew I would want to take them home and study them like Paul did.

Any chance of adding the page that includes the convertibles, particularly the Electra 225 convertible. When I was a kid, we had a friend who had one. It was white with a black top and red interior. Not only was it a convertible, it had air-conditioning. We thought it was extremely decadent, but it was a fantastic luxury on those hot humid Baltimore nights. Our friend used to pick us up and take us to a cool ice cream place in the western Baltimore suburbs.

Doesn’t that intrusive console (goes all the way through, sheesh!) make for some anti-romantic driving? I mean, while a bench/split bench is the best for a couple on a cruise, this type of bucket/console would be horribly inconvenient with the couple pictured, don’t you think?

These car colours make my heart go faster. They seem to be unthinkable today. Just about every big car in 2012 apparently has to be black or grey – both inside and out. Period. Why? Why has the idea of buying, say, a yellow, red or green S-series become so weird? I’m not even sure Mercedes offers these colours on their big models any more.

I’ve not been to see it, but judging from the pictures it doesn’t need much. They lowered the price from $7k to $5k a while ago and I’m surprised it’s not sold yet. If anyone is interested I’d be happy to go on a scouting mission.

I love car brochures. They are the best source of what the cars were like when new. Buick really had some of the best, especially in the ’60s, but continuing into the ’70s and ’80s. They always had a lot of extra content and specs, and those little profile illustrations of the cars continued into the ’80s. Another great year was ’67, which featured movie stars and their cars! Here’s Charlton Heston in an Electra, right around the time he was making Planet of the Apes.

So do I (but I’m pretty sure we’re not alone here!). I started collecting when I was a kid, in the late 70s, and I still have almost everything. Admittedly, the collection is a little light on your basic, mainstream cars, as the brochures were just nicer on the better cars. It was always a little awkward to weasel out with a brochure on a Cadillac or Mercedes when you show up on a 10 speed bike, but somehow I managed. Actually, I still feel that way when I’m not genuinely in the market. I suppose the only place to find old ones is online now, but about 25 years ago, there was a little place in midtown Manhattan that had a great collection. I’d peruse for a while, but only bought one or two.

My best score ever was at the Fort Wayne Auto Show in early 1973 when I was about 13. The Mercedes salesman was guarding the big thick brochures in the trunk of one of the cars, only handing them out if someone looked like a real buyer. He left the trunk open while talking to some guy long enough for me to reach in and grab 2 – one for me and one for my friend. I still have it.

I used to get brochures at the State Fair of Texas Auto Show when I was a kid. I foolishly threw a lot of them out in college or around that time. Fortunately, I’ve been able to get them all back and more through the miracle of Ebay! I do have some that I’ve kept over 20 years, though!
I love the Mercedes story. Good for you, scoring those brochures from that stingy salesman!

Its funny that used to be that way, at the autoshows when I was a kid, the Mercedes, Jaguars, BMW’s and Porsches, were never open, unless a salesman opened the car because he deemed you were worthy of sitting in that 928 or XJ6, my old man would usally get them to open a Jag every year, he would sit in and say, “they are beautiful, but damn are they ******* trouble.” then he would thank them and go look at Town Cars.

Today at the show, there are 18 kids climbing all over an $110K C500 or a SL, cranking the stereo, and no one even notices

I went thru this rite of passage starting about 1969 when our family moved from Butler, PA to Niagara Falls, ON for two years. Double thrill was learning the then-considerable differences between many American and Canadian models.

I was (like many others) an avid student of ‘autology’ in my youth. I am three years younger than you, but still fall in the same era. Your writing style makes it sound much more glamorous than I could ever portray. I also collected brochures, but the Buick dealership in my hometown was off the beaten path, too far for my biking or walking travels, so my Buick collection in on the light side. i still have my collection, but it is not in good condition as I haven’t/couldn’t take proper care of it. One of my favorite websites is http://www.oldcarbrochures.com. I am glad I found this one today. It is fun to read of others that were in my same field of study.

I, too had the gamut of car salesman to deal with, from the burly ones that ran me off, to the friendly ones that encouraged my studies, to lots of them somewhere in between. I went to work for an used car lot in 1971 when I was 15 to get more hands on type of studies. That evolved into sales for a few years. I now have been in the collision repair field for 29 years, working at 3 different dealerships and two independents over the years. I have moved away from the hands on to a desk job now that I’m too old to be on my feet all day. But I still enjoy being around cars, although my enthusiaism for modern cars is dimming. Too much electronics. I like mechanical things.

Can anyone explain to me why “Buick can build 6 different models of each line of cars and be profitable at it and today, you are lucky to get 2 variations (4 door and coupe). With all the efficiencies of CAD you’ d think the auto manufacturers would be able to offer more variations of a body-style.

One reason was volume, with that large of a market share those individual models sold in enough numbers to make it profitable. Because of that volume they needed multiple sets of much of the tooling so it didn’t cost any significant amount more to make different ones rather than 6 of the same.

The other thing is regulations each separate model needs to be crash tested and certified for MPG and emissions.

Buick and the rest could build so many variations back then because it was so easy. With a frame bearing the load, all the body had to do was keep the rain out and not fall apart before it was paid for. Stamp out any shape you like and hang it out there.

Now we expect a car that’s strong enough to protect us from a big crash, rigid enough to handle well, with performance and economy they could only dream of. Also durable enough to rarely break down with barely any maintenance and last twenty years out in the weather.

Does anybody remember the movie Fail-Safe with Henry Fonda? I think there was a black 6 window 225 in some of the scenes. I haven’t seen the film in 20 years or more, but I remember thinking how sharp that Buick looked.